It was on this date in 1830 that an iron horse lost a race to a flesh-and-blood horse. Although the name of the winning equine is lost, the name of the loser, Tom Thumb, is remembered as the first locomotive ever built in this country.
Today we mark the anniversary of the race with a look at words that also made history in 1830. Their achievement? They made their first print appearance that year.
The 1830 birth date of certain terms comes as no surprise. Then-President Andrew Jackson was a proponent of agrarianism, and the term agrarianism first appeared that year. Mass-circulation newspapers were becoming popular that year, and that was the year the term editorial debuted.
But who would guess the verb debut also dates to 1830, or that clothesline first appeared then? Other fledgling coinages from 1830 include fledgling, grandparent, hang around, and myth. It was the birth year of melanoma and of hallucinatory, of gold digger and of fair shake.
But although 1830 marked the year dead horse first appeared in print, it would take another ten years—until 1840—before iron horse, the word for locomotive that started us off today, was spotted in print.